Chapter Four

Enter Anguel  

“A Child is born with no state of mind

Blind to the ways of mankind

God is smiling on you but he’s frowning too

`Cause only God knows what you’ll go through”

-Grand Master Flash

“The first picture of you,

the first picture of summer ...

See the flowers scream their joy ..."

–The Lotus-Eaters

 

   On the morning of July 27, before I got ready for work, I was looking at BBAS’s website, seeing what sorts of children they had on their new photolisting. At this time, BBAS did not have children listed on the Precious in His Sight photolisting, but may have had children over on Rainbow Kids.  

    I had thought that they didn’t do the “photolisting thing,” and trusted them enough to think that they only put pictures of waiting children up on their own website for their own clients. It was no surprise then, to see children listed on their site for adoption and it was once again good fortune that they did list children from Bulgaria that particular day.

    What did surprise me, even though I thought I was a pretty tough-hearted person, was that one little boy, with the birthday of July 12, 1998, no name listed, leapt out at me.  

    I kept looking at that photo of the little boy, his face turned away from the camera, a large hand raised upwards as if to bat the camera away. He was dressed in a white sleeper-type garment. He was being held by a very dark-haired caregiver.  

    He had such curly, dark hair (like my husband's) and big dark eyes. He strongly resembled my father at the same age. Or, more tellingly, the child I myself could have given birth to.

    I yelled to Daniel, who was still in bed, “Hey Dan! Get out of bed and check this kid out!  Who does he look like!” 

   Daniel got out of bed and came over to the computer monitor to look at the curly-haired boy. “I don’t know, well, somebody in your family?” 

   “Yes, he does. Wonder if he’s Russian?”

    Daniel said that he thought not; the lady holding him looked far more Bulgarian than Russian.

    A day went by. That boy still ate into me. I got up early and logged on again to see the little boy and look at his sad little photo.  

    Curious, I emailed Wendy Stamper under the heading Boy on Your Child Photolisting.  Denise was out on vacation and Wendy was filling in for her.

Hello!  This is Elizabeth Case again.  I finally went back over the BBAS website, something I do from time to time.  It is a wonderful site, far filled with more information than the usual sites.

Anyway, Daniel and I would like to know about the little boy born July 12, 1998.  Is he Russian or Bulgarian?  He caught my eye, and I must be honest, I haven’t stopped thinking about him.  We truly would like to adopt a Russian child.  We originally said “infant 0-2 (or maybe I originally said 1)”, but if this little boy is Russian and available, with video, medicals, etc, we would be interested in at least looking at the information you have on him.

If this is something I should e-mail or call Mrs. Hubbard about, please let me know and I will do so on Sunday when she is back.

    I received the following response from Wendy on the same date:

            Elizabeth,

            Thanks!  We’re happy with how it turned out!

            He is beautiful isn’t he!! He is from Bulgaria though.

            If you were to want further info I could get it from Denise or she will be home this weekend.

    Daniel and I hemmed and hawed. We were a bit frustrated at the pace of the Russian process (everybody else was getting their baby’s referrals, why not us?), and we wondered if we might at least start his adoption as a backup just in case Russia didn’t work out for us.

    We couldn’t know how right that would be at that time. It was one of the most fateful decisions we were going to make on our road to parenthood.

    I would like to point out here that the photo may have been Anguel, but it had a different birthday. Anguel’s birthday is in March not July. 

    We had had our hearts and minds set on Russia. Bulgaria was a major unknown to us. 

    All we knew about it was that Bulgaria was known for its weightlifters and had not been involved with the recent regional turmoil in the Balkan region of Europe. We could locate the country on a map and knew its capital was Sofia. We knew it was formerly communist and had turned peacefully towards democracy when the Soviet Union collapsed.  

    That is all we knew.   That and Russian and Bulgarian were Slavic languages that used the Cyrillic alphabet. And maybe something about some funky folk music.

    In fact, I didn’t even know for sure where Bulgaria was beyond being in Eastern Europe — I had to get a map out. Daniel could recall passing through Skopje, now the capital of  the neighboring nation officially known as The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, in 1988 on a long tour of Europe and seeing road signs for Sofia, Bulgaria’s capital city, and meeting a group of Australians at their hotel who’d come over from there that day. They had said they were glad to get out ...

    True to her word, Wendy did forward on to Denise our inquiry about the child.  Now, I am going to tell the readership upfront that these following are the ONLY SET of emails I deleted during our entire relationship with BBAS.  

    A virus by the name of MTX.A made everything prior to December 2000 irrecoverable; fortunately  I had the foresight enough to print out some. You will see why I deleted these painful emails as you read on. I am going by memory here.

    Denise then emailed us the child’s name: Anguel.  

    I really liked that name.  It fit that beautiful little boy in the photo so well.  It was unique, like him.  It was the Bulgarian name “Angel,” transliterated into English based on French pronunciation. 

    Denise emailed us July 31 about the Bulgarian process and how we could switch from Russia to Bulgaria. Little did I know that other families at the same time were being offered the very same thing due to some problems Denise’s Russian facilitator was having in the Volgograd region of Russia. Denise was supportive of in her emails to us and at no time did she tell us to adopt little Anguel in Bulgaria. 

Actually switching is simple.  We contact INS ask them to cable Sofia Bulgaria instead.  Then I would contact Family Focus with you and advise them you would like to be approved for Bulgaria, then we collect all documents, which the ones you collect will be fine and you will need less docs.  The docs will need to be N/C/ and authenticated by the state for Bulgaria and you could travel next week to see Anguel and then in four months once the docs are submitted only one of you need to go and pick him up.  It is that simple.  The over all cost is less because no visas are required the medical is only $7 in Bulgaria for the children and the length of stay is 3-4 days instead of up to 21.

           We have and many switch, it is simple and worth it.

You decide, I am here for you, your know that.  

  Note once again the emphasized items (ours, as always). They became important later on.

   Neither Daniel nor myself liked the idea of two trips, at that time (we are now strong supporters). Nor did we like the idea of switching our INS and having to do the authentication process as opposed to the apostilling process.  

    There was also the added expense of switching. And the child’s age. And how could we handle a toddler if we’d never been parents before?  And travel next week?  I wasn’t ready to travel to work later that day!

    Reason won the day on that — briefly.  The hardest email I ever had to write was to Denise Hubbard a few days later telling her that we couldn’t adopt Anguel due to the reasons mentioned above.  

    I cringe now that Anguel is home to think that we said no to him the first time. Down with reason when it comes to adopting children!

    Denise emailed back saying that she understood and would find a family for Anguel. I told her that I hoped she did. Such a beautiful little boy was in need of a family. Sadly, I only wished it had been Daniel and I.  

    She promised us that she would find a family for Anguel, but to keep our spirits up because our “Russian prince” would soon be ruling the roost. At no time did she pressure us after that about Bulgaria or any of the children she had waiting in that particular program.

    After reading that I felt like a heel. We were letting this treasure slip by for our own selfish reasons. What sort of people were we that we weren’t even going to give this child a chance?

    A month went by. I still could not get Anguel’s image out of my mind. Don’t ask me why, but he had eaten into my heart.  

    Every few days prior I had checked on the BBAS website to see if he was still there. He was. 

    That night, as we were watching television, something, some inner voice, some prescience entered into my mind: adopt that boy from Bulgaria. Do it. Now.  

    I don’t know why that happened, but it was the one time I followed my heart in my life. I turned to Daniel and said, “Dan, we’ve got to adopt that little boy from Bulgaria. I can’t get him out of my mind. What happens to him if he doesn’t find a set of parents? Boys are harder to place than girls, and how many families are seriously considering a two-year-old boy?”  

    The image of this child being left to fend for himself as he grew up made me sick.  If it wasn’t going to be us, it wasn’t going to be anybody. This time, there was no doubt. We were adopting Anguel.

    Daniel agreed and we contacted Denise via email. The night while I was at work, Daniel received a telephone call from Denise saying that she was stunned that we had changed our minds. That we were reconsidering our decision about Anguel.  

    However, Daniel was told that “another couple” was deciding on him and she wouldn’t know until the next Friday if they were going to take him or not.

    That was fine and dandy and wonderful to boot. Later that week I would speak with Denise on the telephone myself and discuss switching our paperwork to Bulgaria and how to handle the INS.  

    She was quite helpful about that, but in my mind, we were doing all this for Anguel in Bulgaria, not any other child, even though Denise began to tell me of other boys she had available. 

    No. It was all for Anguel, not for any other child.

    Did I fail to mention we never breathed a word of this to our families during this time?

    The paperwork insanity began all over again, this time for Bulgaria. I offered to pay Denise another application fee and sign another contract, so I sent her a check for $175 which was BBAS’s new application fee.  

    She sent it back saying the application fee was a one-time deal. That was nice of her and once again I was impressed. 

    However, the contract that we originally signed said nothing about Bulgaria and had one paragraph specifically mentioning Russia. It was going to be another “interesting tidbit” as Anguel’s adoption process dragged on into the following summer.

    However, we were promised that if Anguel was available, we could pick him up in either “February or March” [2000].  

    We believed this wholeheartedly. We trusted Denise and her word implicitly.

    I also began to ask public questions about Bulgarian adoption over on the FRUA boards. A few people emailed me back, and when I asked about their timelines I was surprised to hear that it had taken them between 9-10 months, not the four months we were being told.  

    But I had faith! I trusted what Denise was telling us about that timeline.  Everybody else was obviously getting and giving erroneous information. Or our agency had better connections. Or something like that.

    Then out of the blue, Denise e-mailed me with the following: “I was told that there was an E. Case asking about Bulgarian adoption over on FRUA. Contact the following BB families: ...” 

    And she gave the email for the Patenaude family and the Homeyer family who had recently returned from their first trips to Bulgaria in July. We still hadn’t gotten confirmation on whether or not the couple had chosen to adopt Anguel or not, but I was hoping against hope that the outside possibility existed that they would reject him.

     Later in September, I did email Mrs. Homeyer in response to a post she had made on adoption.com. She ended up being a source of good information for us and helped us during the wait.

    In the BBAS Electronic newsletter for August 1999, Denise wrote about her trip to Bulgaria in July. She portrayed the harrowing situation in the Kurjali orphanage.  

    Note that Rick Marco, BBAS “legal advisor” is mentioned. Why on earth would you bring your lawyer on your first visit to a foreign orphanage you were planning to place children from? Wouldn’t some of the other people involved in running the adoption agency have been a more appropriate choice?

    Also note the “three to four month” timeline is quoted.  How could we not have believed her if we kept on being told that Anguel’s adoption would take “three to four months”?

  It was Sept. 6, 1999. At 11:30 p.m. Denise telephoned and told Daniel “He’s yours!”  When I got home from work at 12:00 a.m., Daniel popped out of the house, white as a ghost.  “Daniel, what’s wrong?  What happened?”

    “Denise just called. Anguel is ours. You’ve got to call her tomorrow and make arrangements to visit him soon. They’re going to Fed Ex us his video and medicals tomorrow.”

  Tears welled up in the back of my throat and I felt myself going giddy. They had turned him down.  

    There was a reason for everything! I was going to be a mom!

  Immediately after changing my clothes, I emailed Denise and asked her why the other couple had decided against adopting Anguel. She said later on it was because he was too African-American looking.  

  As far as I was concerned, he was beautiful, dark, amazing. I emailed her back saying such attitudes were sick. She concurred with that assessment.

  Anguel was, and is, our first.  We were worried and shaking with anticipation when we received that video and medicals on him.  

    This just wasn’t somebody else’s referral, he was ours. This one tiny boy’s fate and life literally rested in our hands and that was a heavy burden for us to bear.

    A few days later we got the video. Like some of the Russian ones, it was sort of comical.

    Anguel was shown standing in the middle of a stark room, dressed in some funky, high-waisted shorts, socks with sandals and a white top. Caregivers were heard saying in the background “Angie! Angie!”  

    His curly hair was in disarray and he had obviously been woken up from his nap.  There was a look on his face of bewilderment and consternation.  

    Somebody tossed a stuffed animal at him that he failed to catch. However, he bent down and picked it up like a pro, and walked a few steps. He then put the stuffed animal to his mouth and began to chew it. 

    There was a closeup of his face; he raised his eyes and looked at the camera and then glanced down again. I don’t think he enjoyed being filmed, nor did he appreciate the commotion of voices telling him to smile and clapping their hands.  He merely turned toward the sound they were making and continued to chew.  I noticed some bumps on his forehead and hoped they were innocuous.

   We watched the video again.  Daniel turned to me and said, “Well, when he squats down, he’ll make a perfect catcher.” 

   I stared at him. “I don’t know.  He didn’t seem all ‘there’. I think this kid’s messed up.” 

   Daniel countered, “It’s pretty obvious they just woke him up — he looks healthy and strong. We’ll have to get this checked out anyway like we’ve been told.” 

   I agreed, and kept that little strong-legged image of Anguel in my mind for the rest of the months to follow.

  It didn’t take us long to decide who we would have to review Anguel’s medical and videos: Dr. Jane Ellen Aronson. I had heard her speak at a FRUA conference that spring on Long Island, where she then practiced. For $200 she would review the video.

    Unfortunately, I had to work the day that her telephone call came in, so Daniel spoke with her.  She told him that Anguel was “definitely Roma,” as are many of the children made available for international adoption in Bulgaria, which she had visited over the summer. There were no obvious medical defects, but the video was too short for her to make a full assessment as to whether he had any subtler medical or health issues.

   But, there were no signs of FAS, not that we thought there would be. So with joyous hearts, we said a YES to Anguel.

    It came time to travel and cash in some of a mutual fund Daniel had inherited years ago from his late grandmother. This was not going to be cheap and BBAS was not giving us any discounts. My airfare for the first trip was going to be $680 roundtrip AND I had to bring cash or travelers' checks in the amount of $7,500 ... a pretty large hunk of change.

    This was on top of the money we would pay for our Russian adoption, a bill that would soon come due as well.

    I began corresponding with Lori Homeyer. She and her family were waiting for her daughter from Kurjali, a small village close to the Turkish border. She and her husband had made their first trip in August and also had been told about the “four month” timeframe.  So she too was still hopefully and excitingly waiting for her child, as were here other children.  And she eagerly touted the health of Bulgaria’s children to one and all on adoption.com and adopting.org.

    For my first visit to Bulgaria, I have not written much.  The week I traveled to Bulgaria was the same week we received Cyril’s video and medicals.  There was no turning back.   This was to be our first encounter with the one person, who at a mere seven months of age, would irrevocably change our lives.

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